Part Two: Bread And Puppet: The Dawn of Giant Protest Puppets

Margaret continues talking to Jamie Loftus about some radical hippies who built gigantic puppets and an entire culture. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People. Did Cool Stuff your
weekly reminder that I have a podcast and my name
is Margaret kildoy and I also, in addition to having
a podcast, have a guest whose name is Jamie loncas Hi.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Hi, you left me on a cliffhanger on Monday.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
I know I left you on a cliffhanger, and it's
going to take a while to get you to the cliffhanger.
I promised the audience that the most tragic part of
this story is going to be related to a hot dog,
and it is true.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
I have a feeling that that's going to be something
people can say about my life when it ends.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
The tragedy is that your dms are just full of
hot dog memes that have been for.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Have been for five years.

Speaker 4 (00:44):
Hey, thought of you?

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Have you seen this one? Sorry?

Speaker 2 (00:49):
I felt very bad. I sent you a hot dog
thing the other day.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
To your credit, you said me stuff that I usually
have not seen before.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Okay, Yeah, Eddie goes a kid selling hot dog on
the Expressway because the protest had taken it over.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Oh. That is one of the best parts of LA
protests is that there are always danger dogs on hand
and everyone is always so wonderful to whoever selling the
danger dogs.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
It's just yeah, we must protect the danger dog sellers
at all costs.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
We also have a producer named Sophie.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Hi, Sophie straight from the Ashes of podcast.

Speaker 4 (01:25):
Hell no, I'm kidding.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
We should just do a podcast. Hell like, that's the
Halloween reverse episodes. It's just being like weird podcast bros.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
So if you just rose out of a floor, that was amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
I know it's not a visual medium, so y'all didn't
get to see that. But the flame effect that's not
a zoom background. Your house is actually on fire.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Yeah, they're like magical flames that don't harm dogs or
my furniture.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
So it's just like, looks cool. You have the little
dog with the coffee cup. That's how I feel most days.
Actually everything's my Do you think that the artist who
drew the dog with the coffee cup? Well, actually, I'm
gonna guess.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
No what to say? Are you going to do an
episode about this?

Speaker 5 (02:09):
Yeah? I was.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
I guess I'm asking this like this is something I
should find out, and I feel like, I know you're.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Kind of the person that I would go to for
that information.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
But what are you gonna ask.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Do you think that they are, you know, well compensated
for having created that art? And how do you think
they feel about it? I know that the image is
just like replicated in to infinity, but I wonder how
they feel about it because I'm sure that it's been
like fucked with via AI on the scary side, but
also been illegally reproduced for positive reasons on the other right.

(02:40):
I would just be curious to know how they feel.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
I agree, And if you, dear listener, think that'd be
a kind of cool podcast idea. What if you went
around and you found people who are behind some of
the most viral hits on social media and the Internet,
And I would love to hear someone ask them questions
and then think deeply about these things, not just surface level.
But what does this say about Oh I can't do
your tagline? What does it say about the internet and ourselves?

(03:04):
And if you like that idea, Jamie, do you know
anything about where they can listen to that?

Speaker 3 (03:08):
Yeah? I guess I did kind of open up by
quietly plugging my own show by accident. What do we
think about this, folks? I? Yeah, you should listen to
sixteenth minute. I wish I could answer that question specifically
for you, but now I'm like, I'm writing it down.
It's a question I would like to answer on that show.
It's by an artist named Casey Green. All right, Casey,

(03:32):
let's see what you're all about. All right, Well, I
feel great already great. I feel like I haven't had
a functioning idea from my brain in weeks.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
That was thrilling, amazing. My favorite version of it is
the one where the dog is looking in the house
that's on fire and says, so I have a book
coming out.

Speaker 5 (03:50):
Yes, that is how I feel all the time. Yeah,
it's been hard to even like focus on my substock
because I like, I just like don't want to be
a like hot topic, like hot, take what's happening right now?

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Person? You know, but so much is happening right now
that I also am not trying to be like.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
You don't want to avoid it. I hear like it's tricky. Yeah.
I think about that a lot, where it is just
like whatever makes people built for that? I lack with
regards to like the quick like I must have my
finger on the pulse. Yeah, it's like I need to
be reactive in my life in that way.

Speaker 4 (04:31):
Yeah, but I don't know.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Sometimes I need time to process. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
And the hotter the take, the less likely it is
to be true. And like, it's still necessary for people
to see things that are happening and tell people on
a pine about it. But it is like I want
to be a cold take machine as much as possible.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
Yeah, I want to be like guys, this take has
been marinating, yeah for weeks. Get ready for a well
soaked take.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
Fascism is bad.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Like, before we jump to the script, I just want
to say very adorable is that Normally Anderson sleeps through podcasting,
but because her Auntie Jamie, she can hear you. She's awake,
she's been a week the time, and just keeps looking around, like,
what are you?

Speaker 3 (05:14):
I love to haunt her. She's in the box, Anderson,
She's in the scary box. She's in the scary box.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Podcast pets are an important part of podcasting.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yeah, my very reactive dog will sleep quietly at my
feet as I record on podcasts.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
What is podcasting if there is not a mammal asleep
on your feet?

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Like, that's maybe what keeps you from a follow We're
just so much better than all the podcasters. We talked
shit on everyone else's garbage. We're great.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
If Joe Rogan had three cats in the room, I
think he would be very different.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
That's actually probably true.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
Yeah, that's just an experiment. Just put a bunch of
puppies in the room and see what happened.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
So, speaking of experimental the ideas, we are on part
two of A two parts. Oh wait, I didn't finish
all the introduction stuff. We also have an audio engineer
who is named Eva hi Eva hi Eva, and our
theme music was written for usd by on Woman and
part two two parter about bread and Puppet, one of

(06:18):
the more interesting theater things that has a long lineage
and has had all kinds of impacts that is also interesting.
I probably already said interesting, And that's one of those
words that when I was in like fourth grade, my
teacher was like, you can't use words like that. You
can't describe things as good or interesting. You actually have
to use adjectives that I mean things. Who's laughing now.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
Teachers calling it like twenty five cent words. Uh yeah,
that was what my sixth grade teacher would say. He
was cool he played opera for us and let us
read the hobbit.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
So, oh that is cool, Yeah, he us prettymple. Yeah.
So they start Bread and Puppet on the Lower East Side.
They name it in nineteen sixty three. It's a thing
that they've been doing a little bit together for years already.
And it was Elka who provided most of the political
underpinning for the project. Like it's an entertainment like artsy

(07:12):
kind of avant garde a little bit, but also sort
of medieval like theater troupe doing puppets and you know,
trying to make this very beautiful stuff. Elka, as best
as I am able to understand, was the more political
of the pair, okay, And she essentially radicalized her husband,
who was a bit more just on the art side
of things. Elka did more of the administrative behind the

(07:32):
scene work, including introducing the initial political spark, which is
what made it stand out. So she doesn't matter anyway.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
Uh God, that's just like magna. Do you feel that
in your gut? Like I just she radicalized him. Interesting? Interesting, okay.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
And this spark that radicalized her was influenced by her grandfather.
The back to the Land socialist, feminist vegetarian guy. Yeah,
and not her ex Bolshevik father. Her father drifted further
and further to the right after fleeing the Soviet Union,
which is a pretty common thing. You flee the Soviet

(08:15):
Union and you start loving right wing American capitalism. I
think that both the US and the USSR can take
the blame for that one.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
And he ended up I think friends with like Nixon
and shit, oh, like he was like influentially right wing.
I think. Okay, her grandfather never forgave her father, like
his own son, for turning right wing and did not
go to his own son's funeral.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
See, people talk about principle, and that is always such
a diabolical thing to witness when the form of rebellion
you're offered is going right wing like that, it's like, yeah,
defying your artist parent by being like, well, I'm going to.

Speaker 4 (08:57):
Become a criminal defense lawyer and.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
You're like, I guess, like yeah, sure, yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
And then like this is the guy who moved to
the USSR to be like, I'm going to be a
steel worker for Stalin and bring the worldwide revolution.

Speaker 4 (09:13):
No follow through, no commitment, yeah, right.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
So Alka took after her grandfather and looked up to
her grandfather, and it was her own politics influenced by
her grandfathers that infuse bread and puppett Although Peter in
nineteen sixty eight he's going to say very shockingly and
clearly inconsistently, he says different things about politics in nineteen
sixty eight and twenty twenty five, which are the two
time periods that I've read about his politics most directly. Hey,

(09:40):
in nineteen sixty eight he's very like, our work isn't
about ideology, it's this protest theater. In twenty twenty five
he is like, there is no world left because Gaza
is being destroyed. And I am a communist and I'm
obsessed with Peter Kropowkin, you know, like.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
I adore when someone becomes more radical as they which
I feel like that is what a gift.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
No, totally, I think he's like, oh, we don't have
an ideology. He's still actively doing direct action protests against
the Vietnam War by giant puppets, which we'll get me.

Speaker 3 (10:11):
So I also think about this as a wild sixteenth
minute connection.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
But no, I like these wild connections absolutely.

Speaker 3 (10:17):
When I talked to Taizon day who did Chocolate Rain, Yeah,
which is like a very political song. For the first
like ten years that he did interviews about it, he
really avoided talking about the politics of like really what
he was like, just listen to it and see what
you think, and like gave kind of like obfuscating answers,
and then I think at some point was like, fuck it, Yeah,

(10:40):
it's obviously.

Speaker 4 (10:40):
A political song, like yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
And was willing to but I think it started from
whatever the political climate at the time, but also a
like resentment of like being asked to spell out what
he felt was very obvious. You're like, oh, I don't know,
is Chocolate Rain a political song? Like a baby born
will die before the sin? I don't know, is that
a chargelaar to you?

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Like, what's funny is that I don't know whether I
actually listened to the entire song before, Like I knew it, right,
but so I was like, I don't have no idea
whether it was political, and then yeah, listening to those
episodes very direct one of the clearest articulations of like
kind of like where progressive slash radical politics are kind
of at about a lot of issues are just like

(11:25):
wad out really intelligent, like really fucking well.

Speaker 3 (11:28):
It's so wild that everyone and it was everyone in
like two thousand and six who missed that, Like it
was very much a skill error on the part of
the general public. But I'm curious they were doing direct
action yea. Were the shows themselves political?

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yes, okay, I actually think that this is kind of
a like, hey, I'm not like into ideology, okay, and
also like a little bit of a defense of like
I really do care about this as art, you know. Yeah, yeah,
I'll talk about with some of those plays where okay,
they have this theater now and their friends are helping
them pay rent on the space to run it in

(12:03):
Elka started doing her own children's theater as well, and
she would do art music just as much as her
husband and.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
But forget about that.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, but no she did. Yeah. No, it's funny because
she like, throughout the whole thing, she's also gonna be
running her own theater. But they're running this theater on
a shoe string budget and always have the couple and
their three kids. At that point, they're gonna end up
with five all live in a railroad apartment with a
bathtub in the kitchen, and it shares a toilet with
all the other apartments, and they are absolutely radical. Through Elka,

(12:35):
they are involved in some of the earliest protests against
the US involvement in Vietnam. By nineteen sixty five and
nineteen sixty six, they were regularly putting on shows that
talked about the issues that people were facing, like to
quote Bread Andpuppet dot orgs write up about it, rents, rats,
police and other problems of the neighborhood. They're talking about
the issues that people are facing, you know. Yeah, And

(12:57):
they would lead processions of puppets to the streets protests
of the Vietnam War. And there are some photos of
this era where it's just like people wearing black robes
with like kind of surreal stylized paper mache skull masks
and it's fairly arresting. I really, okay. I like puppetry
and like costume because it hits the uncanny valley and

(13:19):
makes me feel like the world isn't real.

Speaker 3 (13:21):
Yes, I like when puppets are used for well, not
scary reasons like Chucky, but like when they're used to
make you feel unsettled and like, yeah, I love that.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah, And masks are like it's funny because it's a kid.
You're like, oh, people put on funny masks and every
now and then, I'm just like, someone walking around with
a bird mask is terrifying. You're just like, there's a
bird over there, you know, but it's shaped like a person.

Speaker 3 (13:52):
Why does the bird have such meaty legs? I love it.
Animatronics are essentially puppetry, Yeah, totally. I love animatronic history
because you're like, Wow, this art for children that has
consistently scared children, and that's the history of puppet. Yeah,

(14:13):
they're kind of puppets and clowns unequivocally all kind of scary.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah, but also classics. Okay, See the reason I'm so
interested in this, I've been talking for a while about
this is completely unrelated to we're talking at actually's not
you know what I'm going to say. This is related
to Breton puppet and surrealism and like or not surrealism,
but the concept of making the world feel surreal. I've
been thinking about how like, I have a really mixed
feeling about horror as a genre, like my own engagement
of watching it, and I like things that make me

(14:41):
feel like there's a world beneath this world and that like,
things are different, we can feel and act in really
different ways, and the easiest way to access that is
through terror and like death and you know, horrible things
and rot and whatever, you know. And I've always been like,
but where are the other genres that give me that feeling?

(15:03):
And actually puppetry, animatronics like dark crystal, like yeah, yeah,
the things that are unsettling in that you are like
going to just feel differently and to tie it back
into the script, these protests, these people walking down the
street protesting a war like solemnly as skull people walking

(15:25):
down the street would actually get bystanders to stop what
they were doing and look and engage with the protest
marching by in the way that they don't if it's
just an anemic chant and one badly played drum dragged them.
I have sent so many hours of my life in protests.

(15:48):
Dong dung du. Yeah, I have been the bad drummer
at protesting.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
Look, we need the bucket drum. We need it. It's
got its place in history. I don't know that I've
seen it recently, but it is arresting, and it's arresting
in a way that I can't think of in a
way that like a pithy signe is just not.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yeah, because you can look and because the pithy sign
I don't hate one, and it makes people really excited
to go. They're like, I've got the best sign, and
so then they actually go out right yes, but yeah,
there's something about like, no, I want people to notice
this thing, and like we'll talk about a little bit later.
Peter actually has really beautiful things to say about puppetry
and about like this way of like accessing this like

(16:34):
beauty and this way of creating this like really solemn environment.
Sometimes you know, well, anyway, okay.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
I also love that like how puppets are. I would
imagine if they're like on the scale you're describing, like
they're designed to interact with their environment and they're designed
to move in a way that I don't know. I
agree with you on the signs, but sometimes you're just
like if kamala one, we'd all be at brunch right now.
Well I don't know about that, but I'm not so

(17:01):
sure about that.

Speaker 4 (17:02):
Yeah, well what can you do?

Speaker 2 (17:04):
People like, well, actually you probably should have been protesting.
I mean, yeah, we would.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
Probably be out here if Kamalawa, But all good, glad to.

Speaker 4 (17:12):
Have you here totally.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
And that is the thing. It's like, it is probably
better to let people do things that you think are
kind of cringey rather than make people feel the long
welcome at protesting.

Speaker 4 (17:22):
Yeah exactly, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yeah. So nineteen sixty seven, Bread and Puppett participates in
Angry Arts Week and the angry Freaks of the Lower
East Side were pissed about the Vietnam War. And I'm
going to paraphrase my own episode, I'm gonna self plagiarize
again real quick. Wow, Oh no, I can't do the
same transition twice. Even though it's around AD time, you're

(17:43):
all gonna have to wait for the ad. Sorry, dear listener,
it's not yet. You just know it's just weak.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
Plagiarize your own self plagiarizing ad transition just.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
Oh amazing. Well, you know who doesn't self plagiarize unless
it is certain things but not other things. It's the
products and services that support this show. And we're back.
So flyers went up all over town calling for the
Angry Arts Week and they started having meetings regularly. This

(18:15):
group called Black Mask that I mentioned earlier, though, like
artsy surrealists, people who probably did the first Black bloc.
They show up. There's also a group of quote quasi
Marxist street theater called the Pageant Players, and I want
to learn more about them one day. But the life
is finite and Bred and Poppett are there, and none

(18:35):
of the famous established art people would go to these meetings,
just these like working artists, the sort of scrappy scene,
and everyone at the meeting is like art should mean something,
Art should direct people towards motion, towards action, towards unfucking
the world. This was a radical viewpoint within the arts
scene at the time. The avant garde was really into
the idea of art for art's sake, that any the

(18:58):
idea that any art would have a purpose, even if
that purpose was to arouse like pornography, was not true
art with a capital T and a capital A.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
And I went to art school for a little bit,
and I would always get in trouble in sculpture class
because I wanted to make functional objects like what they were,
like the famous expansion and contraction. So I made like
a lace parasol, and I like it. Built the whole
thing out of wire myself from like scratch I mean
I bought the lace, I didn't hand tap the lace,

(19:28):
and I didn't get a good grade on it because
I like it wasn't an art piece.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Oh did you not fit in an art school that
it's so magpie so magfie.

Speaker 3 (19:38):
Yeah, that's also dog shit too. That just like setting
the boundary that art cannot be functional, that's absurd. But like,
by by that standard, like a chef cannot be called
an artist, Like what the fuck do you mean a design?

Speaker 5 (19:57):
Like?

Speaker 2 (19:58):
And I bet you that, like a chef would only
be considered an artist if they made like deconstructed food
that has no calories in it, you know, like right,
and like god forbid, someone want a burrito? Like I
like fancy food too. But yeah, this idea that you
can't do art unless you're completely abstracted from the world,
no oat.

Speaker 3 (20:15):
Right, right, Yeah, like you can't. No, I can't get
into my feelings on art school and art. But that's bullshit.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, and the Angry Art Week people called bullshit on it.
One of the things that they did. On January twenty third,
nineteen sixty seven, Angry Artists went to a high mass
at Saint Patrick's Cathedral. The Archbishop of New York was
this guy named Francis Spelman who was like all in
on the war. He was like, fak, yeah, Vietnam War.
Even the Pope was actually like a chill the fuck

(20:42):
out about that man. Piece is actually better. It's like
overall better idea.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
No no, no, yeah, that's not what govild want.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
And so the Archbishop of New York declared quote total
victory in Vietnam. Oh so the Angry Artist disrupted mass
unfurling posters in the aisle in the middle of it
of a named Vietnamese kid with the words Thou Shalt
Not Kill and Vietnam written on it. Real subtle stuff.
You know. Cops were on them immediately. The cops have

(21:10):
been tipped off and the Angry Artist got dragged off
to jail, to the tombs. But they only spend a
night or so in jail before they're bailed out. Most
of the Angry Arts Week was less action oriented and
more like specific theater and street theater and stuff. About
five hundred artists participated in total. There's a bunch of
poetry readings, there's collective murals. There's film screenings, mostly at NYU.

(21:33):
There was a bunch of cool things they did, Like
they drove a flatbed truck around with people doing performances
on the back around the street. They would pass out
leaflets and poetry. Yeah, like I like the idea of
like the float is like plays.

Speaker 3 (21:44):
Yeah that rocks.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, and bread and puppet's contribution. They did a performance
that was a play, but it was just a physician
lecturing a med school class about what napalm does to
the human body and how to treat it. But then
just like goes on a tirade for hours about all
the statistics of how fucked up the war was and
all the killing and all the sexual violence and all

(22:07):
the costs of war.

Speaker 3 (22:08):
Would the puppets say it?

Speaker 2 (22:10):
I don't know how puppety this one was. This might
have been a cost anyway. I actually don't know one
or the other. It could have been all puppets.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
I was like, I would love if that were a
puppet piece.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
I would go to a thirty minute of that. I
would not go to an hour's long of that.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
Personally, Yeah, no, the bit would wear thin after a while.
But conceptually that rocks.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
Oh, unless you did it where like you know, it's
actually sort of all intermission like you can come and go,
you know, like you're like, oh, I'm gonna go back up.
They're still doing the thing, and it'll create this atmosphere
of like it's the ever present background. It's the like
casualties of war, rather than like you have to sit
there and listen to this and they're mad.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
And then it becomes a durational piece.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah, okay, so anyway, I could not tell you how
they handled that. But Bred and puppett is part of
the movement, and our theater starts growing in popularity. They're
onto something. By nineteen sixty nine, they're touring around Europe
bringing their five kids with them. But New York City
is changing fast. A lot of reputable people who but

(23:09):
this is me avoiding saying things that I couldn't say
are totally proven and known in record. There's a lot
of reputable people who believe that the US government manufactured
the drug crisis and promoted drug trade in inner cities
in order to break the power of the Black panthers
and like black radicalism in general. That seems fairly likely
to me, But I haven't examined this in depth myself.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yeah, I've seen such writings. Yeah, I'm inclined to believe it. Yeah,
like it seems perfectly plausible. Yeah, but I can say
that drugs and crime are getting more common in New
York City and people that have been poor forever but
now that they are poor and also in danger from
the drug war. And I want to be clear that
the drug war is a big part of that or
the main part of it.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
It's just harder there. And this is also what tore
part up against the wall motherfuckers around the same time. Basically,
Elka and Peter and their kids, they're like also kind
of hippies at heart, and they spend a lot of
time in Vermont and their kids and the volunteers at
this theater and all of them. They keep getting mugged
all the time. Oh, and they're like kids are getting
held up for their lunch money on the way to

(24:10):
school sometimes.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
Oh God.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
And they're like, let's go back to Vermont. And they
take an artist residency at Goddard College in Vermont in
nineteen seventy and they're doing Bread and Puppet where Peter's
mostly running again. I don't know entirely divisional labor. I
just keep hearing that she does all the behind the
scenes work, but she's also sets up the Dancing Bear
Theater for kids and would go around and perform at

(24:34):
schools in the area.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
Sorry, I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier,
but I did google Bernie Sanders Bread and Puppet, and.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
Of course he's got some stuff to say.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
Bernie Sanders on State at the Bread and Puppet Circus
nineteen ninety four.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
Oh yeah, yeah, like no, that makes absolute sense. Yeah,
really good. I mean Vermont probably friends with Ben and Jerry's, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
I'm like these Vermont I mean they call themselves free,
these Vermont I love them.

Speaker 4 (25:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
And since most of their volunteers didn't come with them
when they moved to Vermont, they rebuild the organization up
all over again with folks from the area. Elko was
always interested in music and starts getting into sacred harp
choral music, which my friends have told me is like
really amazing and I need to get really into and
I have not yet, so I don't know as much
about it yet. But it's like shape notes singing, and
it's this early nineteenth century folk tradition, and Bread and

(25:26):
Puppet helped the revival.

Speaker 4 (25:27):
Of that wow.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
In nineteen seventy five, they moved further north to Elka's
family's land. I have been upstate Vermont. They rebuild yet again.
Elko works the homestead and builds it up as a farm.
They have sheep and apples and all these things, and
the kids are now also puppeteers. Elka continued to run
her own puppeteering as well, I believe, doing children's theater specifically,

(25:52):
and CounterPunch says that she said that it was the
opposite of Bread and Puppet. That to quote her, we
were always on time and clean.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
Okay, sounds defensive, Okay.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
Well it's like compared to Bread and Puppet, right.

Speaker 3 (26:08):
Yeah, Look as someone who's been late and dirty many times, Yeah,
let them cook.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
Bread and Puppet became slowly less popular in Europe, and
they started touring Latin America more. But they started moving
their focus to their next big thing, which was called
Our Domestic Resurrection Circus, which is a free two day
festival every year of giant puppets out in the woods
or out in the fields.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
Lovely.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
Having their performances outside instead of in tiny storefronts meant
that they could go big, like eighteen foot tall puppet. Big.

Speaker 3 (26:48):
That's Bertie Sanders nineteen ninety four.

Speaker 4 (26:50):
I think that's I am.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
It is massive crowd.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
Huge, tens of thousands of people coming to these things.

Speaker 3 (26:57):
It's a Springsteen concert at this puppet.

Speaker 4 (27:00):
Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah. And they have a junk band orchestra of amateur
brass musicians. And they ran from I've read one thing
since nineteen seventy four, I read one thing that implied
a couple years earlier. They ran until nineteen ninety eight.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
Their first performance was a history of the US from
its origin up to the Vietnam War. The nineteen seventy
five circus was seven hundred people attending, and by the
end they were bringing about forty thousand people every year.
Nearby farmers made a lot of their money for the
year by renting land to the campers, and even though
the event was free, the donations from festival goers was

(27:37):
the main source of income for the whole theater for
the year. A journalist named Scott strut described the festival
like this, a little bit grateful dead concert with some
undeadlike rules no drugs, no dogs, no alcohol, and a
little bit rainbow gathering and a little bit religious celebration
and a little bit political being.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
That's amazing. There's a historic I think it opened in
the forties, but the Bob Baker Marionette Theater and they
do a huge free outdoor summer event cool similar to this,
Like I mean, I don't think we're doing forty thousand,
but like it's yeah, these gigantic public puppet demonstrations that rules.

(28:21):
It's amazing when I hear about stuff like that, and
especially like on the breaded puppet scale, It's like, how
amazing must it have been to get to grow up
with that?

Speaker 4 (28:30):
I know, Like that's so special.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
I know.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
Actually, one of the people I was talking to between
writing the script and recording it with Someone's like, oh,
my friend grew up in Brett and Puppet and I'm like,
I weekly wish I had more than a week to
do my episodes and that's so cool, and I'm like, yeah,
I would love to know more about what it was
like to grow up in this space. You know. So
Peter runs the art right people help realize Peter's artistic

(28:57):
vision with puppetry and things like that, but the whole
actual organization of this festival is much more democratic. The
whole thing was organized by committees that would take care
of the various needs, and so like, the structure that's
really influencing people's lives is more democratic, even if it's like,
you know, this is my artistic vision. Helped me create it,

(29:19):
which is fine as far as I can tell, you know, sure, yeah,
and thanks audio engineer. And the committees would get together
and sort out trash pickup and parking and camping. And
there was too many people to bake bread for everybody,
even in the ten foot long of it, right.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
Yeah, forty thousand bread slices.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
No, And initially they would do it like kind of
potluck style when it's like seven hundred people coming right.
In the end, they were like, all right, people can
set up food stands. And that was a bit chaotic.
But it took them into the late nineties to determine
the no drug policy more formally. I think they were
a bit afraid of being authoritarian, being like, oh, you
can't do drugs or whatever. But basically they were like,
this actually needs to be a family friendly thing. And

(30:04):
the no drugs thing didn't trickle down to the campgrounds, okay,
And so you have this like it used to be
about the puppets, man, but now it's about the They.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
Basically went corporate. Man. There.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
Now there's like because there's people selling food and tied
ie and hemp clothes and drugs, and there's drum circles
around the clock, and it becomes more of a specific
festival that puppets are part of in the average participant's
point of view. Like I read one piece from like
a traveling kid in the nineties who was like, oh,
I went to this amazing thing. There was drum circles

(30:38):
and drugs and there's puppets, you know, instead of like
I went to the third Yeah, yeah, exactly, like and
some people loved this new vibe and some people hated it.
It started getting absorbed into the mainstream subculture of the
late nineties, like counterculture stuff. Newspapers covered it like it
was a sixties nostalgia festival.

Speaker 3 (30:58):
I see, Okay, so it was a grateful that kind of.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
Yeah, And they didn't necessarily want it to be, or
at least that's the implication I get. And none of
the newspaper stuff would ever include the like anti capitalist
critique that was embedded rather unsubtly into the art itself. Yeah,
it to me reads like they were victims of their
own success. And then a thing I promised you a
long time ago. After a cliffhanger, you're gonna have to

(31:24):
wait for another cliffhanger because now those ads wow violence,
all podcasters go to hell. I am lit by red
light as we type this. I'm so used to writing that,
I said as I type this. Anyway, ads, here they are,

(31:47):
and we're back. So in nineteen ninety eight, a forty
one year old logger named Michael Sarahzon, who've been going
to this festival for years, got into a fight with
a guy named Junebug over a hot dog.

Speaker 3 (32:05):
Ooh, there's enough to go around, fellas.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
Come on, I know Junebug hits Sarazen, and Sarahson died
from internal brain hemorrhagon like internal bleeding in the brain.

Speaker 3 (32:16):
Oh my god. And it's not the only hot dog really,
I yeah, I won't. That's another for another day. But
that is sad. It's not the saddest.

Speaker 4 (32:28):
Hot dog death.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
Yeah, fair enough.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
And that's how we should view dead.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yeah, and so Peter Schumann, the bread and Puppet guy,
is like, you know what, that's it We're done not
with bread and Puppet, but with the domestic resurrection circus.
And so the nineteen ninety eight when was the last one,
and he was like, this became what it shouldn't be.

(32:53):
And what they've done since is that they spread out
their summer performances so that they're more focused on theater
and less on giant blowout festivals. So you can't just
show up for all of it and camp out for
a weekend. You know, if you want to go see
a piece, you can and it's still beautiful, but it
focuses it back on the art, which honestly.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
Did it stay a free festival for everybody? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (33:16):
I am under the impression that it continued to be
free the entire time.

Speaker 3 (33:20):
As frustrating as it is to have become like you're saying,
a victim of a onestone success. I am very impressed
with how long they were able to keep the project
like to their moral standard, especially coming out of New York.
I mean, it's like, I know that they were a
part of a very political revolutionary group of artists, but

(33:41):
like people are trying to capitalize on your shit in
New York, but they moved to from I just think
it's very very at ruple that they that they were
such holdouts at Rocks.

Speaker 2 (33:53):
Well, I'm going to talk now about the way that
they handled capitalism and art in a very very principled way,
literally a more principled way than I do it, frankly.
And at some point around the same time as some
of the early circuses, they turned their old barn into
a bread and puppet museum, holding all kinds of puppets
and masks. And this was such an important place that

(34:15):
Vermont put it on the official state map, the Bread
and Puppet Museum. Elka ran a print shop and sold prints,
and she built an archive of all the ephemera of
the theater. She made sure that the bills got paid.
Elka died in twenty twenty one, and in sort of
an obituary for her, it's written like this quote, she
was the glue that held the whole enterprise together behind

(34:35):
the scenes of Peter's manic creative energy. And they started
really developing their ideas together and putting them out there.
And Peter put it like this in nineteen eighty seven quote,
our glorious civilization glorifies itself with what it calls high art.
Puppeteers have no soul searching trouble in that respect. We
produce what has no ambition to be high art. Low

(34:58):
art is what we make and what we you want,
not the fine arts. The course arts are what we use.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
The course arts. That's terrific.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
And as someone who's done stand up comedy in a garage,
I feel like you might identify with that a little.

Speaker 3 (35:13):
The course is art. I think what they're doing is
far cooler than what we're doing, but I do. I
mean low art rips like and it's also I mean,
any low art is going to be considered high art
in one hundred years because it's just a fucking passage.

Speaker 2 (35:28):
Oh absolutely, who cares.

Speaker 3 (35:29):
Yeah, course arts that's gonna stick with me.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
Yeah, that rocks. They would sell these cheap art prints.
That's like, the whole thing is cheap art, and they
started taking it really seriously, and in nineteen seventy nine
they filled a school bus with tiny paintings on scraps
of cardboard and shit and would sell them for like
ten cents to ten bucks. And by nineteen eighty three
they had all cheap Art manifesto and I'm just gonna

(35:52):
read it. It's good manifesto. Okay, just imagine the words
that I'm slightly louder on as all caps, because this
is absolutely a nineteen eighty of course.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
Yeah, and it was written in Vermont.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
And I think it might have been a letter pressed
the print. Yeah. People have been thinking too long that
art is a privilege of the museums and the rich.
Art is not a business. It does not belong to
banks and fancy investors. Art is food. You can't eat it,
but it feeds you. Art has to be cheap and

(36:25):
available to everybody. It needs to be everywhere because it
is inside of the world. Art soothes pain, Art wakes
up sleepers. Art fights against war and stupidity. Art sings Hallelujah.
Art is for kitchens. Art is like good bread. Art
is like green trees. Art is like white clouds in

(36:47):
a blue sky. Art is cheap.

Speaker 3 (36:50):
Hurrah ooh, stuck the landing too. I know I haven't
spent a ton of time in Vermont, but I can
see and smell that manifesto, and I mean that in
the best way.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
I love that totally. And like, intersexual feminism has offered
some critiques of like everyone should be volunteer and everyone
should be poor, you know, like we've kind of at
some point been like how self sustained are you? Like?
You know, like do we want only people with generational
wealth able to do certain types of things?

Speaker 5 (37:21):
Right?

Speaker 2 (37:22):
And so there is a like getting down in the gutter.
I actually think part of low art for me, I
think podcasting is a low art honestly in a way
that I like is being like, yeah, but sometimes I
gotta sell it. But they actually they are selling it, right.
They are making these things and selling it and trying
to make enough money to feed themselves and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (37:40):
You know, they're still making a living. I mean they've
got to sustain the project.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
Yeah, but they're also almost everyone's volunteer their shoe string budget.
They're very like we're back to the landers and like
living off the land and stuff, and you know, it
is like I've read some critiques of Bread and puppett
around this, Okay, some of which I think we're better
written than others, but okay, but I think it's important
that we remember, like, yeah, I really like the cheap

(38:06):
Art Manifesto. Actually it was one of the first political
things I saw is that I got a it's probably
a dollar I bought like a block print of it
or something. I think when I went to Brand Puppet
when I was like seventeen, I moved to New York
City and someone took me to Bread and Puppet and
it was like kind of weird. I didn't totally understand it,
but the ours cheap thing was like, that's cool, you know.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
That's incredible. Yeah, and then you could afford to take
a little bit of their philosophy with you.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, totally. So giant puppets became an
essential part of street theater. And I don't know that
this is the true origin of it, but it is the
origin that I have found of it, and they become
part of a street theater in a solemn way. As
we're talking about earlier, Peter said once quote, puppets are
not cute like muppets. Puppets are effigies and gods and

(38:56):
meaningful creatures.

Speaker 3 (38:58):
Oh okay, Well, there's many ways to look at a puppet, Peter.
I mean, I love that. I mean, I'm a pee
Wee's playhouse, yeah, man, But I like when a puppet
is a little ugly, Yeah, you know, like a puppet
should be a little bit uly. Okay, so what does
he mean when he says that, is he referring to scale?

(39:21):
What are the puppets look like?

Speaker 2 (39:22):
Well, an awful lot of their puppets are like real sad,
giant faced people who are like mourning and like moving
through the streets, where like one person's holding up this
head with like it'll be like the head is paper mache.
I'm kind of conflating it with like street protest puppets
in general at this point, but like a lot of
their puppets are different. But you know, you have a

(39:44):
giant paper mache head held up by one puppeteer and
that the shoulders will be fabric and then the arms
will be fabric and then there'll be one person on
each side holding hands out.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
I'm looking at them now, I know this style. Yeah, yeah,
and it's I mean that's the thing. It's like they
move with the breeze because they're wearing clothes and oh
it's incredible.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
Yeah, And they're like often in a crowd marching so
that the hands and stuff are moving the way that
the protester puppeteers have to move and like, yeah, there's
some photos of the circus that I think are worth
looking up. They look pagan as hell in a really
beautiful way. Where's this beautiful open field with some people
watching as these like eighteen foot tall puppets are walking around,

(40:27):
you know, mm hmm, and.

Speaker 3 (40:29):
That feels good. I also love like in a big
puppet operation like that, that everyone has to wear a
little matching outfit and it's a little culty, but it's thrilling.
I just love it.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
Yeah. Absolutely, I do think that the swipe at Muppets,
I disagree with you, but that's not you. But with Peter,
oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:47):
I mean it sounds like he's kind of being a hater.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
Yeah, I think he's being a hater. I actually think
the Muppets are absolutely going to be a subject of
this show one day because I think that they impacted
culture in incredibly positive ways. I will always hold the
Fraggle was like the first anarchist show I ever saw. Yes, Okay,
they convince a king to not be king, and they
like all worship a compost heap and like give from

(41:10):
each according to ability to need to each according to need,
and sing nice songs. So puppets have a long history
and political theater. And this is where I almost started
this whole episode, and then I was like, no, I'm
going to start where I started. They've been used to
satirize the powerful a lot. Puppetry has been banned for
decades at a time throughout history. In seventeen ninety three,

(41:30):
they were banned in Saxony, to quote author Carrie magg
quote being itinerant. Puppeteers were regarded with suspicion and accused
of not only participating in crime, but of perpetuating it
by attracting crowds of poverty stricken individuals to respectable places
of business. My god, Okay, yeah, And basically it's like
puppets are like sketchy, you know, they're low art. Their

(41:53):
course art right. The bread and puppet model spread, including
to a group called Art and Revolution that we briefly
mentioned in our probably last week's episodes about the World
Trade Organization protests. This was the group Art and Revolution
got together, the group called Direct Action Network that shut
down the World Trade Organization in Seattle, which means that

(42:16):
they dramatically and directly influenced the economic model of the world.
Because the neoliberal agenda, as a consensus of what everyone
agrees is what should happen to the world broke as
a result of the Alt globalization movement, and the big
first Opening Salvo was a successful shutdown of the meetings

(42:37):
orchestrated by people who are started by people who are
inspired directly by Breton. Puppet and art and revolution started
nineteen ninety six from protests against the Democratic National Convention
in Chicago. There's so many of these groups that I'm
not going to name the mom I'm just going to
name another one. There's Paper Hand Puppet Intervention out of
North Carolina that made so many puppets for so many
protests of the Alt Globalization era, many of which meant

(42:59):
their just dirduction at the hands of police, Like when
at the Republican National Convention protests in the year two thousand,
police claiming to look for bombs raided the puppeteer space
and destroyed three hundred puppets.

Speaker 3 (43:12):
Oh my god, Okay, that undefeated undefeated with I'm like, oh,
that's a silly one. You just did a silly crime.
That's so fuck now. I'm like hyper focused on, like
we got to get these puppets back on this street.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
I know this is thrilling, Like we shouldn't like larp
the anti globalization air again and do the same stuff.
But there is some stuff around. We talked last week
about some of the ways that they built coalition and
like actually organized like direct action in ways that felt
very inviting for people to join, and stuff like puppets

(43:49):
and the way of like breaking the spell that the
viewers are witnessing. And there's many puppets will break the spell,
and so will cinder blocks or a truck. But like,
these don't need to be enemies for me each other.

Speaker 3 (44:00):
To each their own. Yes, these can cooperate. Yeah, made
the puppet cast the first cinder block.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
Yeah, totally. Although I will say, and maybe I'm wrong
about this, but the last time I saw giant puppets
is a big part of these protests. I'm going to
claim the era of giant protest puppets came to its
end in the year two thousand and four at the
Republican National Convention in New York City, when a giant
green dragon puppet went up in flames in the streets. No,

(44:28):
I believe that it was set on fire on purpose
as a way of turning it into like a blockade
and a statement. Okay, well, I know someone went to
jail for it.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
Fascinating. Thank you for the political puppet Drauma updates. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I did not know. This dragon set a flame.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
Yeah, the green dragon. It was the sound system for
the march, and then all of a sudden, the sound
system was evacuated and the puppet went up in flames.
I think in front of the Convention Center, but I
actually can't remember. I was distracted because the police attacked,
and I was like, I don't want to get arrested,
and I wasn't because I was there. I never did crime.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
You couldn't have been arrested because you weren't there.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (45:05):
Actually, now wait, I'm checking.

Speaker 3 (45:07):
This dragon is mass Oh.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
I want to look at the picture of it too.
Everyone has to.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
Way, cow just got a picture of its head on fire.
Really good.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
But puppetry continues, Street theater continues, and Bread and Puppet continues.
Elka died of a stroke in twenty twenty one. As
we mentioned a few days before she died, she was
performing with Bread and Puppet. Because their work is performed outside,
it was more COVID safe than traditional theater, so they
were able to keep doing performances. Very much of twenty

(45:40):
and twenty one, and a few days before she died,
she played the International on a recorder, and this has
been one of the main anthems of the left for centuries,
and the opening lines, at least the version that she
was playing. I believe she hand wrote these notes and
handed it to someone who was singing or something. Arise ye,
prisoners of starvation, A risey, wretched of the earth. For
justice thunders condemnation. A better world is in birth.

Speaker 3 (46:03):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
And she died a few days later with her husband
and five children next to her. She was buried on
a pine grove on her farm. I honestly can't imagine
a better life. I don't know every I'm sure she
had her shit. I don't know anything about the relationship
besides what's available in these public sources.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
But it sounds like she lived a long, full life
making radical art and building community and being loved. That's
really amazing.

Speaker 2 (46:33):
Yeah, Like I got tiery writing some of this where
I'm just like she ruled, Like she just changed the
fucking world by like sticking with what she believed and
finding a way that, like brick by brick, you build
a fucking better world.

Speaker 3 (46:50):
And I love that she performed through her life too.
I know that not everybody's able to, but I just
love stories like that where it's not a job, it's
like their passion. Yeah, calling and God that souff.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
Totally like she was probably in her very late eighties.
She dies, and you know, was playing stuff that ties
into centuries long legacy a few days before. Like Peter
continues to work, and his work in the past few years,
at least since twenty twenty three, has been focused some
on the Russian anarchist Peter Kopak and the sort of

(47:23):
founder of the modern understanding of mutual aid, and specifically
r Peter. Peter Schumann is really excited about talking about
how to compare cooperative life among humans to trees living
in the forest, but then also kind of ran into
the well. He feels very strongly about Gaza, and so
as soon as the genocide kicked up a notch in
twenty twenty three, he moved a lot of his work

(47:45):
to that. Although controversially among some of his collaborators and me,
his work around Ukraine is mostly critical of the US
and NATO and Ukraine and not the Russian invasion. But okay,
he's ninety one years old.

Speaker 3 (47:57):
I don't know, as we're just saying, say, he's sharper
than most ninety one year olds, but yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
He's a ninety one year old Communists, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
You know, yeah, like you're like, I guess we could
try to move his position.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
It's not gonna happen. Yeah, and yeah, he's still as
best as I can tell, he's ninety one or so.
Now he spends his time painting bedsheet backdrops for the theater.
Interviews with him are entertaining. They're a little bit raving,
mixing religion and politics and all sorts of things in
a very interesting way. And I feel like I want

(48:30):
to end with some of what he said in a
recent CounterPunch interview. When someone asked him what do we
do next, he said, quote, my best examples come from
Gaza and Lebanon, where people from under the rubble are
declaring that no, we are not giving up. No, my
family is dead, my grandpa died, my cousins are no more.
We are not giving up. Amazing when people are like,

(48:52):
you know, what do you do? What would you tell
people to do? And he has this quote, immediacy, do
it immediately to not do planning revolutions, to not do
lengthy developments of a new type of engineering of this
and that, but step right into the streets, step right
into whatever is available, and speak right out in front
of whatever you have out there, Peter, and hearing that

(49:16):
from someone who's like, there's an assumption that like, ah,
a person's older, they'll be like, oh, you know, I
gotta be real careful, do everything slow, He's like, No,
what I have learned through my life is you just
do it. You just see a thing. You go right
out and you see what's happening, and you speak about it,
and you step right into trying to make things better.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
And that's what I love about his art forum, and
just about low art conceptually in general, is that it
is often, not always, but like often built to be
reactive and built to be learnable, and built to be
like I would imagine that, you know, all the puppeteers
that he's worked with over the years did not start

(49:59):
being like I want to be a classically trained puppeteer.
It's like I have something to say, what is the
vessel to say? And like, what a gift to meet
some weirdo who's like puppets can do this and be
like all right, you know, I just that's incredible.

Speaker 2 (50:13):
Yeah, no, totally, And like you know, most puppeteers are
volunteer and stuff and then go off and do things right,
you know, It's like by having it sort of focus
on his artistic vision, it actually kind of also creates
a space where it's like, yeah, you come here and
you learn, and then you go do your artistic vision
also and work with community to make your vision happen.
And like the idea that can still be a community

(50:33):
thing is like, really, it's really interesting to me.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
Yeah, I finished writing this, and I'm just like, I've
never had any specific desire in my life to make puppets.
It has never occurred to me. I love making stuff.
I love telling stories. There's a different version of the
world where I would have come up and just been
like a street performing puppet tier and you would have
run away. But I didn't. And now I'm like looking
at this and I'm like, there.

Speaker 3 (50:58):
Is a chapter of your life that can and must
be consumed by puppets. Let's start puppetting, let's start hearing.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
Yeah, we'll do it at your comedy shows.

Speaker 3 (51:08):
But like yes, yeah, like, but not in the annoying way. Yeah, totally,
that's the all. But sometimes it'll be annoying. I just oh,
that's so exciting. Yeah, that's so exciting. Well, I feel inspired.
This is great.

Speaker 2 (51:22):
Thanks thanks for coming to possibly the most PUSI episode
I've done of the show, at least in a long time.

Speaker 3 (51:29):
This is incredible.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
Yeah, next week, bread and puppets. I know, I know
two amazing things I'm gonna start.

Speaker 3 (51:35):
I mean, I think the most important thing that I
learned is I should start giving out bread at my shows.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
Yeah. And there's like something kind of religious about sharing bread,
but like, yeah, it brings people together. There's a reason
that that's been going back thousands of years. You're making
your share bread.

Speaker 3 (51:52):
Yeah, I've been focusing on wine. I should have been
focusing on bread. You know, comedy shows are focusing on
the wrong side of the religious equations.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
Not blood anymore, just body.

Speaker 3 (52:00):
It's all about body.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
Yeah, anyway, you got anything you want to plug speed bread?

Speaker 3 (52:07):
Check out Raw Dog The Naked Truth about hot dogs,
of which bread is a component.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
That's true. I'm so hungry. I haven't even dinner yet. Anyway,
whatever to do?

Speaker 3 (52:18):
No that's it. Now that I have tempted you with
the hot Dog conceptually, I release you to the hot
Dog Wild Wow, and there's a hot dog death that
changed the course of Bread and Puppets.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
You know, I know. I have a new book out,
Imagine Me as the Dog in the Burning House. I
have two new books out, honestly, I have one that
is the third book in the Daniel Kane series, but
it's also a standalone called The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice.
And I write very short books. If your attention span
struggles with reading, sometimes people like my books, and that's

(52:51):
out now through Strangers in Tangled Wilderness. And then I
also helped write a tabletop role playing game world called
Defenders of the Wild where if you want to play
as animals teaming up to defend their forest against giant
monsters that are coming and destroying everything, you can do that.
It's a tie in with the board game Defenders of
the Wild. They have the same name. Well, actually think

(53:12):
the RPG is actually called The Defender's Almanac, And I
wrote a lot of the world and so those are
things you can read if you like. Well, I guess
my art. I don't know, whatever it doesn't really relate
to me talking about history.

Speaker 3 (53:24):
It is wild that you haven't done puppeteering yet, because
you can do everything everything. It's amazing.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
My theory is if something is humanly possible, I'm a human.
I think everyone should have this theory and not go
out and do surgery. Right, but like within reason. Yeah,
like some things take longer to learn and are higher stakes,
but puppets aren't high stakes at first.

Speaker 3 (53:49):
Yeah. That's the best part about art is if you
make something bad, usually no one dies.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
Yeah. You know, your job as a beginning artist is
to fail faster, not to succeed more, but to fail aster.
That is your job.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
Thanks, felt, you're the coolest. Thank you. We're happy.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
Yes, thanks for coming on.

Speaker 3 (54:06):
This is the best. Let's start a puppet commune.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
We're doing it. And Sophie, you want to be in
the puppet commune? Yeah? Hell yeah. Now we have someone
who actually knows it to organize things.

Speaker 3 (54:18):
I actually have an amazing fun mixed puppets.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
Oh amazing, that's cool. Yeah, all right, see y'all next week.

Speaker 1 (54:28):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
visit our website goolzonemedia dot com. Check us out on
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